WITH just five drivers failing breath tests out of the 32,000 Lancashire police stopped in their Christmas drink-driving crackdown, the force evidently shared this newspaper's view that a debate was needed on whether this kind of blitz was really worthwhile or whether the resources involved might be better employed against other crimes.

Yet, even though hailing this outcome as a success, the police were apparently not altogether sure.

For they commissioned independent research to help them determine whether they should continue to run this kind of drive; whether it was supported by the public and whether it was beneficial. The results - coming in the main from motorists who were stopped in the Christmas roadside checks - are published today and suggest both that the campaign seems to have been effective and that such tough action to catch drink-drivers has overwhelming public support. Indeed, the findings also indicate that drivers in Lancashire regard the enforcement of road safety law as one of the most important things the police do.

Apart from wondering whether the conclusions are perhaps warped a little by the more public-spirited drivers being the ones who took the trouble to respond to the survey's questionnaires, we are happy to accept the findings - simply because drink-driving, whatever its scale, is a serious and dangerous crime that always needs to be curbed.

By how much will remain a matter for debate, but Lancashire Constabulary has been granted the justification if felt it needed to carry on at the high level it chose.

What is certain, however, is that there is no law in this country for random breath testing - whereas these drives have manifestly been just that. But the survey shows a strong mandate for this among the public.

Yet if they and the police are happy for the law to be bent in such a fashion, it is high time that the law itself was made to comply with the sentiment, so that any remaining doubts about the justification for these crackdowns may also be dispelled.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.